1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a dye compound and an ink that contains the dye compound.
2. Description of the Related Art
Although dyes for use in ink jet printing liquids (inks) are generally water-soluble dyes, recorded images that have been printed with inks containing water-soluble dyes can have poor storage stability. More specifically, such dyes can exhibit color fading of images due to sunlight or various illumination lights (i.e., low light resistance), as well as color fading of images due to trace oxidizing gases in the atmosphere (e.g., ozone, NOx, SOx, etc.) (i.e., low gas resistance).
In the interest of providing storage stability, PCT Japanese Translation Patent Publication No. 2003-510398 describes a pyridone azo dye compound as a water-soluble ink jet dye. U.S. Pat. No. 2,432,419 describes an azo hydroxy aza-indolizine dye.
However, the above-described dyes may still fail to provide satisfactory storage stability.